From Fry to fried in one quick blog…

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This week, Stephen Fry closed his Twitter account after jokes he made about a fashion designer friend of his were seized upon, and roundly attacked, by people on social media.

 

The pertinent points here are that the designer was a friend, she was in the room, she wasn’t offended, and they remain friends. But that didn’t stop an army of social media users rushing to get offended on her behalf.

There’s no doubt this is one of the worst sides of Twitter: the knee-jerk, reactionary, mob-rule mentality in which there is a dominant sub-culture of people waiting to be offended and vent their spleen at, basically, anything. People who are prowling, waiting to become upset on behalf of pretty much anybody else.

Fry’s personal blog said ‘too many people have peed in the [Twitter] pool‘ – and invited people to grieve for what Twitter had become. Fry’s blog is worth a read and, as you would expect, he underlines his position beautifully.

However, he’s not alone. Coincidentally, in an interview published by the Guardian this week, Paul Merton says he has no desire to run a Twitter account because it would be “like taking the vilest heckler home in my pocket. Why would I want to do that?” Again, very well put.

Comedians should be allowed – encouraged – to make jokes without fear of being hounded on social media: content, especially comedy, cannot be censored by masses of people who are hiding behind anonymous online accounts and handles. The threat of an anodyne, bleak, dystopian future where everyone is frightened to say anything even slightly controversial is scary.

It’s enough to make you wonder why any right-thinking person or business would bother with it. However, for businesses, it remains a key way of communicating messages. If that’s where the audience is, then it’s essential to engage with them in this way. If a business stops using Twitter well, the audience doesn’t disperse – they simply start listening to, and engaging with, a rival instead.

Of course, Twitter isn’t all bad, and remains tremendously successful, if you choose who to follow carefully and only engage with people who are behaving constructively. Having a robust social media policy in place is critical, (with particular attention paid to crisis management), as is ensuring that the people handling your accounts know what they’re doing. Social media isn’t something that just anybody can do – communicating business messages well is as subtle an art as it ever was.

Which is why it’s always worth highlighting when businesses use Twitter well. The biggest organisations realised several years ago that social media needed to be at the heart of all customer relations strategies – complaints are more likely to flow in via Twitter than they are on the phone now.

A well-handled complaint can help convert an aggressive Twitter user into a follower, or even an advocate.

Supermarkets have become the best at this. Arguably the biggest collection of customer-facing organisations in the UK, it is vital for them to ‘do’ social media, and to do it well.

We decided to put this to the test. This isn’t a real complaint, but it has been something that plays on my mind very slightly every time I open a packet of bacon. Simply put, it’s stacked the wrong way. It’s a first world problem of the worst kind, of course, but I wanted to see how Sainsbury’s would deal with me pointing this out.

The following took place:

So there you go: very well handled, I’m sure you’ll agree. It clearly wasn’t a serious issue, nor an actual complaint, so they didn’t attempt to take me offline. Instead, they dealt with my question, have elevated to the correct people, offered me an amusing diversion, put a smile on my face, and everyone’s happy. They even get bonus points for the semi-obscure Elton John reference.

It’s exemplary social media use from a major corporation, and helps to prove that Twitter isn’t all bad, after all.

 

Podium offers social media management as part of broader digital marketing and SEO strategies. Feel free to drop us a line on [email protected] for more information.

 

 

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